The Butterflies and the Storm
by R. Donald James Gauvreau
Summary: After an accident in the Department of Mysteries, Harry finds himself displaced in time. Along with Luna and Rolf's son, a fifteen-year-old Tom Riddle, Blaise's mother, a wizard from the earliest days of Hogwarts, and a Mulciber that isn't Tom's. Things are about to be very interesting. And very messy.
1. Harry Potter, Date Unknown

_A/N Welcome to _The Butterflies and the Storm_. This is a story about time travel and, as the title suggests, one of the themes is how **even small actions can, down the road, have really big consequences**. The flapping of a butterfly's wings in Tokyo leads to a tornado in Kansas (so the saying goes), and…_

_Well, here's another theme: **You cannot be an observer without also being a participant**. Simply by existing, the protagonists are having an effect on history. Whether it's a stable time loop or not remains to be seen, but the protagonists are still having some kind of effect._

_To support these ideas, reviews are going to effect the story. You can suggest actions, whether immediate or down the line, and these will "nudge" the narrative. Based on how in-character the suggestion is and how often it has been suggested (among other factors), the likelihood increases of that suggestion being followed, even if it takes the story down a course that I didn't anticipate. Similarly, **there are mysteries to be uncovered**, and by presenting your own theories you increase the likelihood that the characters will develop these same theories._

_But take caution as you do so! As it stands, **three of the protagonists will die and one will be lost to the others forever**. It is possible that you could save some of these (maybe even all of them) by suggesting the right actions and proposing the right theories. But **a happy ending is not guaranteed**, and you could also kill them all._

_Chapters will be published every week or two. They'll be on the shorter end of things, probably no longer than a thousand words each. _

**Chapter one: Harry Potter, Date Unknown**

Your name is Harry Potter, and you are having a very bad, no-good, just plain awful day. You've never really believed in gods or fate before, prophecies notwithstanding, but somebody just _has_ to have it out for you.

The day had started off like many others. Breakfast with Ginny and the children— it was difficult to think of what life would be like when they went off to Hogwarts— and then off to the Ministry. To the…office. As much as you enjoyed the greater influence that came with your position at the head of the Auror Department, and the opportunity for reform, it was still a desk job.

You were almost happy when the Ministry was invaded, and you were elated when some of the invaders penetrated the Department of Mysteries. Here was some excitement, finally.

Fighting goes fast, and it was barely ten minutes before one of your spells failed to connect. Behind your target had been a time turner-like device, the product of the Unspeakables' latest research into Time, and…

And now you are standing in a grassy field with a splitting headache, pointing your wand at a young Tom Riddle.

"Professor Evans!" cries someone else, about the same age as Tom . "What are you doing?"

You've beaten Tom before. Several times. You don't have anything to worry about from this one. Slowly, watching for any sign of imminent aggression, you lower your wand. Tom follows suit a moment later.

"Sorry," you say. You've never been a professor, but the kid looks pretty distressed. It would probably be better to kill Tom somewhere else.

They aren't the only ones standing in the field. There are two more adults, one who looks old enough to chat with Dumbledore about the good old days, and another whose age looks to be somewhere between you and Not-Dumbledore. And then there are two more children besides Tom and the shouting kid, all four of them clearly of age to be attending Hogwarts.

"Why do you think I'm your professor?" you ask.

"Because…you are?"

The old man smiles and looks at each person in turn. "Harry, you clearly know young Tom. And I know of you both. Would you care to suggest what's happened?"

"Time travel."

"What?" This comes from a girl, a little younger than Tom and the kid that isn't your student.

"What year is it?" the old man asks.

"1966," she answers promptly. "And I didn't touch a time-turner."

"No. No," the old man repeats. "I suspect that was Harry."

"And why is it my fault all of a sudden?"

"Because I remember you telling me about a very interesting occurrence in the Department of Mysteries, many years ago. _Many_ years ago."

Well, that's good to hear. You…definitely survive and get back home then. You wonder what's going to happen to Tom, though. You think about what the kid shouted, and wonder if that name alone, "Professor Evans," was enough to kill your mother.

You make a mental note to obliviate Tom before this affair is over. Maybe he'll remember again despite that, but you would prefer it if your whole life hadn't been determined just because Voldemort heard the name Evans in his youth and decided to be wary of it in the future.

"Right. And what year do you come from?"

"Lysander Scamander. You knew my parents, Luna and Rolf." _Luna's kid_. Well, that's fantastic. And apparently you're close enough to the family that he remembers random stories that you had told him. "2110."

Merlin's brown-stained pants.

You don't really know what to say to that.

"And it's 2009 for you," Lysander says.

"Yeah…"

"Let's go around then, all of us. Tom?" Lysander asks.

Tom is unflappable. Now that the wands are down he looks as if he took a wrong turn in Diagon Alley rather than been displaced in time. "1942," he answers, pronouncing each syllable with crispness.

"Filius Flitwick," says the not-student, and you suddenly want to take him aside and have a long conversation. A person that that you not only recognize, but who also never wanted to kill you. "1905."

"D-Dominique Zabini," says the girl. Blaise's mum? "Ah… 1966…"

"Charles Mulciber. 1922." Too early to be either of the Mulcibers that you remember being associated with the Death Eaters. But that didn't mean that this Mulciber wasn't sympathetic. On the other hand, Mulciber can't be more than a Second Year. You find it hard to be frightened of him in that light.

The other man does not answer at all. He simply watches as the conversation unfolds. There is wariness in his eyes and his hand is near his wand. You suspect, by the way that he looks at each person, that it is the presence of the children that is staying his hand.

The more that you look at him, the more that he looks vaguely familiar.

Lysander says something to the man, almost as if he's saying spells to him. But Lysander is not touching his wand and the man is responding in turn. It must be language of some kind, though, because Filius and Tom both seem to be following along.

"Baron Alfred Marley," Lysander finally says. "From the year 1020."

"What was that?" you ask.

"Latin," Lysander answers, and suddenly you feel very stupid for not realizing that. "They stopped teaching it for fluency at Hogwarts early in the Twentieth Century, but Mum insisted on me learning anyway. Marley speaks Old English, which is far enough removed that he can't make out most of what we're saying. But the Latin was the same."

Lysander pauses, and mutters a spell. Something ink-like flows out of his wand, writing numbers on the air. It's the time, the year—_2110_— down to tenths of a second. "Interesting. But that's not enough to go on," he says, and he nods to Marley, who performs the same spell.

_1020_, it says.

"So the spell is tied to our personal timelines. That's very interesting," Lysander says.

"It doesn't tell us when we are, though," you say.

"No," Lysander admits. "Filius, you referred to Harry as your professor." Flitwick nods, and he continues. "Would I be right in assuming that you recognize everyone else here?"

"Yes."

"And they came at the same time, I expect."

"Last year. Transfer students." Filius pauses. "They said they were from Canada, but I guess that's not right."

"So it's 1904," Lysander says. "Very interesting..."

It looks like you're going to be teaching after all.


	2. Charles Mulciber, 1904

_A/N __Kind of interesting, trying to juggle everyone right now. It should be easier once we don't have everybody in the same room, I think, but we'll see. _

**Chapter two: Charles Mulciber, 1904**

Your name is Charles Mulciber, and you are trying to get used to the idea that you are going to meet your older family. Except, younger than you last saw them.

Including your mother…

Maybe you can… Maybe you can be sorted into a different House. And never, _ever_ run into her.

How old would she be now, anyway? That's something you actually have to think about, but Potter-who's-also-called-Evans interrupts you. "What are you doing here, Mulciber?"

"I don't know. I… I was studying. And then I was here."

You don't like the way that Potter's eyes go back and forth between you and Tom. It reminds you of your mother. It is making you think of soap, which might be an even worse thing to do.

You need to calm down. And, most definitely, _stay still_.

"Sir?" says the kid named Filius. He's been quiet for the past few minutes. "I…" His back straightens. "Professor Evans, I have something to give to you, I think."

Potter receives a thick envelope, which he opens and empties with the tip of his wand. A letter comes out and unfurls before his eyes. He shakes his head.

"Who gave this to you?" he asks Filius.

"You did, sir. Yesterday."

"Of course. That makes sense. What day is it for you?"

"July 31st. You visited me at home. You said that it was very important."

"I'll have to remember that," he says, and then he hands the letter to Scamander. "It's actually for you. But I suppose that I wanted to make sure Filius recognized the person that he was going to give the letter to."

Scamander receives it with both hands. "If that's true, then Filius and I do not meet until his displacement here and now." He examines the letter. "Oh," he says, and then he mutters a spell that you don't recognize.

The letter unfolds, and unfolds, and _unfolds_. It unfurls and unrolls and grows longer and longer, until it reaches the ground and is nearly wrapping around his feet.

You walk around to see what it is, but the letters are written far too small for you to read them. Even Scamander seems to think so, and he whips out a pair of glasses from his coat and applies several enchantments to them.

Then all is silence for a few moments.

"Filius, could you hand me the galleon in your pocket?" Scamander asks. He looks at it curiously, then back at the parchment in his hands.

"If the scroll is anything to go by, I think that we have the date." He begins to read. "'June 30th: Get galleon from Filius. Convert 9 sickles to Muggle pounds. Go to Newham in London…' And then it tells us to make a series of bets."

"On what?" Potter asks.

"The 1904 Olympics. And then we have investments to make. Every day." Scamander skims down the letter, hands moving along it as he does so. "Some of these purchases and sales are mandated down to the minute."

He stops.

"How long does it go?" asks Tom.

"Until July 30th," Scamander says. "And then, according to this, we'll have five hundred thousand galleons."

"That's a lot," Potter says.

"And even more in 1904."

"How much, exactly?"

Scamander pauses to think. "About three times more, I think. I think this makes it clear that we're going to be sticking together for however long it takes to find out what's really going on. And with that in mind, I want us to all agree on something. Right now."

Dominique's expression doesn't change one whit from the curiosity she's been wearing for a long time now, but Tom immediately looks wary.

There is something behind it that is familiar to you. He is accustomed to threatening experiences.

"We can't know what's really going on here. Not yet. But some of us are familiar with others, which puts them at a disadvantage." Scamander frowns. "I daresay that I could manipulate at least half of you without a problem, knowing what I do. So we are _going to play fair with each other_. Am I understood?"

Most everyone nods. Even Tom, who is looking carefully at Potter as he does so. Marley doesn't, but apparently he doesn't speak the right kind of English.

"And no-one is permitted to reveal anything about the future unless all those concerned are in agreement about it." Scamander's gaze lingers on Tom, before passing to Filius and Dominique. "All of us have made mistakes, but right now we are not the people that we may one day become. So we will not hold anyone to what they may do in the future."

He does not look at you at all as he says this, and you wonder if that means anything.


	3. Harry Potter, 1904

**Chapter three: Harry Potter, 1904**

Several days pass by. You and the others have taken up temporary lodgings at Diagon Alley. Lysander and Flitwick are currently at work going between following the letter's instructions and finding something a little more permanent. The letter mentioned how much it would cost, but not where it was.

Considering that you were the one that gave the letter to Filius, they're somewhat frustrated with your (future) negligence. You'd like to have words with yourself too, but barring another strange turn of events it doesn't seem like you'll be having the opportunity.

Perhaps you could write a letter to yourself, and then not open it up until after you've given the letter to Filius next year?

Regardless, that will have to wait. You're in the process of settling some other time travel business.

You're sitting outside the office of the Headmistress of Hogwarts, Eupraxia Mole. You remember something about her being involved with some Peeves-y incident, but you aren't sure if that's happened yet. Maybe you'll look it up in the history books or ask Lysander or something like that.

Helpfully enough, there are chairs outside the office. There are only two, the one that you're sitting in and another, occupied by a short woman with a hooked nose that reminds you a little of Severus Snape. Her face is blotched by rosacea, no doubt brought on by her drinking. You have been sitting here for twenty minutes and in all that time she hasn't kept the flask away from her lips for more than a hundred seconds— you've been keeping track.

All that you've been able to make out in that time is that her name is Professor Doppler. And… she is not here to see the Headmistress.

You're thinking about this when the door to Mole's office opens up, and out steps someone who looks remarkably like Doppler. In fact, they're dead ringers for each other, except that the new one lacks Doppler One's alcoholic rosacea in favor of a certain blankness in her expression. She moves like a charmed broom, automatically and almost artificially, and passes you without acknowledging your presence.

Doppler One follows after her.

"Thank you for waiting, Mister Evans."

"It isn't a problem. I'm sorry for asking to meet with you on such short notice."

Mole smiles. "Whatever do you mean? We've been expecting you for a very long time."

You take a seat in front of Mole's desk. You try to not think about how familiar these circumstances are. It'll only make you homesick.

There are other things for you to think about, anyway. Like how you're going to convince the Headmistress to give you a job when you don't have any verifiable credentials and aren't even sure what the openings are. And, too, that thing about how she's been expecting you.

No. _They _have been expecting you.

You decide to go with that first. "What do you mean, ma'am?"

"You're not really from Canada are you, young man?"

You had mentioned it when you had arranged for the appointment. You didn't have the accent— you aren't even exactly sure what a Canadian wizard's accent is supposed to be— but you thought it best to stick to the script that Time had apparently arranged for you.

"No. I'm not."

Eupraxia Mole looks at you carefully. "You're not aware of it, are you?" She grins. "Finally, somebody else who's in the dark. And here I thought that you were going to be lording secrets over me."

Speaking of people lording secrets over other people…

"Explain, please?"

"Oh, right." She chuckles. "Twenty-eight years ago, shortly after I became Headmistress, I was given a letter that told me to expect you.

"It… would have been exactly when I was born."

"That doesn't surprise me. The whole thing was supposed to have been a prophecy. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The letter had apparently been handed down from Headmaster to Headmaster. Our memories of it were then removed, to return only should it become relevant to us."

"So when did you remember?"

"As soon as you mentioned your name. You have children with you, don't you?"

"I… do. Three of them."

"But they aren't yours. Tom, Dominique, and Charles. Am I right?"

You nod.

"Hogwarts does not normally allow transfer students. I will have to make an exception for them, however."

"Did…" You may as well see how lucky you've gotten. "Did the letter mention a job opening for me?"

"Oh yes. You're to be made a professor. The letter was incredibly insistent on this point. Now, I don't know what your story is, but the letter— the prophecy, rather— assures us that you'll do well enough."

You nod again, more enthusiastically than before. "I don't know how much I can tell you, but you can sure that I know my way around fighting the Dark Arts."

Mole laughs. "Defense Against the Dark Arts?" She chuckles a little more before continuing. "Not at all, Mister Evans. That's Professor Doppler's post— the one that I was talking with while you were waiting outside."

"Oh. Forgive me, but she looks a little…"

"Scatterbrained?" Mole sighs. "_Damaged? _It's true." She bites her lip. "I assume you don't know the story. Sabrina Doppler went abroad many years ago, and shortly thereafter disappeared without a trace. Her family lost all contact with her and she was assumed dead.

"She came back to us two years ago but something happened to her while she was away. Sabrina doesn't talk very much anymore, but she does what she has to do. And Louisa… Poor Louisa. You were sitting with her. She took to drinking after Sabrina came back. Not even she knows what happened, but seeing the aftereffects was terrible enough for her." Mole pauses. "I haven't the heart to ask about their parents. They're mudbloods, you know. Their parents can't possibly know how to react to this. It's all that I can do to give the girls a place here, for as long as they can handle it."

There is so much _sympathy_ in Mole's voice that you barely catch how she described the Doppler sisters.

You… You…

This is not the right time. Or the place.

There is a part of you that wants to ream her for saying that. A very big part. And lots of other parts. Most of the parts, actually.

But this is not the place, and she is obviously not a Death Eater. Maybe you can have a chat about this later on. But for now, it's obvious what the worst part of living in this time period is going to be.

"So if I'm not teaching that, then what openings are there?"

"Potions."

"Pardon?"

Maybe you just misheard.

"Potions, she says again.

"But I'm not a potions master."

"Maybe that's a good thing. Our last potions master blew himself up last semester." She chuckles. "Literally blew himself up. He accidentally turned into a living bomb."

"That is making me feel even more inadequate," you admit. "Are you sure that's what I'm supposed to teach?"

"Yes."

You sigh.

"Alright. I'll figure something out. Do you think I might be able to switch to something else if there's an opening?"

"We'll discuss it," she says amicably enough.

Well, that's good. You'll ask Filius later what it was that you were really teaching.

That leaves just one other thing.

"So, do you remember who gave you the letter?"

"Of course! I wouldn't forget it again if you said obliviate. It was Nicholas Flamel. You know, the alchemist."


	4. Dominique Zabini, 1904

**Chapter four: Dominique Zabini, 1904**

Your name is Dominique Zabini, and the past month has been all kinds of bewildering, amazing, and even a little scary. Lysander Scamander has told you, several times, that you died sometime after your hundredth birthday and you'd think that would reassuring, but there's something about his attempts to comfort you that makes you worry.

Admittedly, he's like that with _everybody_, so maybe he's just that kind of person. You don't think that anybody else has noticed his gloominess.

You may have the opportunity to find for sure in just a moment. You've been spending most of your time tagging along beside as Lysander gave Marley a crash course in modern English. It was lots of fun, and you're certainly going to miss it for now and look forward to when you might be able to do it again. Filius was fun too. You're glad that you'll be able to see him at Hogwarts, even if this Filius won't know you yet.

But— that is the past and maybe the future. The _present_ is all about the Sorting Hat that's being settled on your head right now. And despite this not being your first Sorting, you find yourself to be looking forward to the experience as if you hadn't done this once before.

You've been told that transfer students are not normally accepted. But apparently they're willing to make an exception when prophecies are on the line.

"To answer your first question," the Sorting Hat says, "let me tell you that I cannot reveal anything that I have or have not noticed in another student's mind."

"Are you sure?"

"Very much so. It would make some things easier, on occasion, but some thought that would be too much an invasion of privacy."

"Can you tell me things about myself that I don't know?"

"Thoughtful little girl!" You can feel its amusement. "I'm not used to Sorting older children."

"Have you done it much?"

"You're the third," it says, and you know that the Hat has to be referring to Charles and Tom. Charles was entered under the name Evans— the story is that he's a cousin of the professor's— but it would still be difficult to get a name that would follow after Zabini even if you tried.

"Where would you like to go?"

"I'm okay with anything, really," you say politely. Your feet swing back and forth as you wait for the Sorting Hat to respond. Part of you wonders what it looks like.

"You're not simply being apathetic," it observes. "Salazar would be proud to have you."

"He always sounded lots of fun."

"But there is something more about you."

"I guess I would like to go to Hufflepuff," you admit. "I… don't anyone to be suspicious of me because I'm in Slytherin. I can't be helpful."

"You think that your help will be needed."

"I don't really know what's going on. I'm worried."

"It is not uncommon for a young child, destined for Slytherin, to ask to be put in any other house. They often ask for Hufflepuff. Do you know why?"

"Because nobody pays attention to Hufflepuffs."

"Do you know what I tell them?"

"What?"

"How very Slytherin of you. Oh, but I shout the name," the Sorting Hat says. "That's how I declare their house."

"So that's where I'm going?"

"Well, it _would_ be a good spot for you, I think. Some people would say it is the only house fit for you. You're only fourteen years old, and you're already perfectly willing to lie, cheat, steal… and murder." The Sorting Hat pauses. "Slytherin has a poor reputation among certain segments of society. These would claim you were made for the house."

You smile, as if the Sorting Hat had told a particularly funny joke. "Okay." You know that conversations with the Sorting Hat always seem to go on longer than they actually do, but you still don't want anyone to think that you're taking too long and wonder why.

"But there are specific circumstances under which you would do such things. If you can truly be a cold-blooded murderer, then you will be able to find peers in every house. And…" The Hat pauses again, and you can feel a kind of satisfaction pulsing through its fabric. "You want to avoid Slytherin because you want to help your compatriots." It laughs. "With _that_ in mind, I wouldn't care to sort you anywhere else if you asked."

After it makes its decision you take the Hat off your head, set it on the chair, and walk to the Hufflepuff table. You pretend to be focused on the meal in front of you, but you keep Professor Evans visible in the corner of your eye.

You had been observing him very carefully. All of them, actually. And something _very_ strange happened in the professor's eyes when Tom was sorted into Gryffindor. You know that you are before the professor's time, all of you except Lysander, but he seems to be especially interested in Tom.

(It is not hard to remember sight of his wand pointed at Tom's throat. There is unspoken history there, and it is strange to realize that, despite their present age difference, the professor must remember Tom as the older one.)

You have seen Professor Evans watching Tom closely, studying him. You have seen Tom doing the same to Evans. You have seen that they have noticed this in each other.

But just as important as these details, you have observed something else: They haven't noticed _you _watching them.

You need to make a better friend of Charles.


	5. Alfred Marley, 1904

_A/N_ _This is more to establish Marley than to move the plot along. Another chapter will be coming along in a few days. _

**Chapter five: Alfred Marley, 1904**

Your name is Alfred Marley. Several years ago, earlier than anyone had expected, your father passed away and you inherited the barony of Etocquigny.

You were one of the earliest students to take instruction at Hogwarts, and it is a wonder to you that you have found yourself so far removed from that time. Godric and Helga, Rowena and Salazar— they are _legends_ now, whom you see so clearly in your mind's eye.

Rowena's table manners are (were) atrocious. Salazar sacrifices (sacrificed) his sleep for the sake of those students in need of extra attention. Helga always has (had) an off-color joke for any occasion. Godric studies (studied) on his feet because he can't bear to stay still.

Nobody remembers.

Lysander asked if you wanted to be told about what the future held in store for you.

You told him that you would appreciate silence on the matter.

He made it clear that you would almost certainly find out, one way or another.

You acknowledged that this was so— it was no surprise that you would be influential and remembered in the course of time. Nevertheless, you would not seek the knowledge out yourself.

You will not play with destiny. Things will happen as they are meant to happen, and not because you sentenced yourself to them in a mad attempt to avert them.

And at any rate, you are not entirely sure that you are the person that Lysander read about in the books. Even if it has been proposed that you will be in some way responsible for the "prophecy" which Harry had spoken of. You would certainly have been in the right position, Lysander told you— but then he cut himself off, reminding that you had asked not to be told what you did not know already.

"Harry was not able to find Flamel," Lysander tells you one day, after Harry and most of the children have gone away to Hogwarts.

"We can continue to search for him."

"Filius is probably going to be put on the job. There are some investments and sales that need to be taken care of in France anyway. I suspect that these things are connected."

"When will you reveal your suspicions to Harry?"

"Soon. I may be wrong. Part of me hopes that I am wrong."

"But part of you does not."

"No," he admits. "It might be for the best."

You nod in agreement. "Let us continue my lessons. I wish to see Hogwarts again, and be able to understand what is being said there."

"Perhaps you could be a professor too. You could teach History of Magic."

"If you can teach me what's happened in the thousand years between my time and this time."


	6. Filius Flitwick, 1904

_A/N I apologize in advance for the headache, Yami. _

**Chapter six: Filius Flitwick, 1904**

Your name is Filius Flitwick, and you are sitting in a theatre whose name you can't pronounce, watching the close of a play whose words you can't understand.

Well, not enough, anyway. You can pick out just a little bit, here a little and there a little. You've been learning some conversational Latin as you've been helping Alfred Marley learn modern English, and as French is derived from the same, you've been able to figure out some of the dialogue— Lysander even told you that French, rather than Italian, was probably the closest to what modern Latin would be like, had the Roman Empire not crumbled centuries and centuries ago.

Yes, French. You're not in Britain right now.

One of the advantages to being displaced in time with a younger doppelganger is that you don't have to go to school. Instead you get to accompany a century-old crazy man on a quest to find a yet-older, yet-crazier man and his wife.

But as the play ends and the theatre empties out, both you and Lysander Scamander are forced to admit defeat. Again.

"Maybe he's just not in a theatre-going mood, Mr. Scamander," you propose.

Scamander sighs. "For the past three months?"

"Are we really sure that he should be at one of these?"

Scamander nods. "Flamel was an obsessive theatre-man— even wrote a couple of hundred plays himself— and he was very… picky. Critical, I should say." Scamander turns left and takes a seat at an open-air diner. "Six theatres, twice a week— and I don't regret the excuse to taste some of the culture, not at all, but…"

A man comes over and takes your requests. You order a water, since that's the only drink you know in French, and Lysander calls for the same.

"What I mean is that we should have seen him by now."

"And we can't just knock on his door."

Scamander surreptitiously conjures lemon slices for both of your glasses. "He liked his privacy. He never kept his condition secret, but he didn't like being bothered at home. There's a strong divide between his private and public life."

"Maybe he's under polyjuice. You know, so that the muggles didn't notice that some theatregoer wasn't ever getting older."

He shakes his head. "He hated that stuff. A notice-me-not charm is all that he needed. You'll learn about this a hundred years or so when his autobiography gets published," he explains.

"Then…" You shrug. You don't have any other ideas. The sounds of France move around you, flitting by alongside the scents of the café and the

"I think that something's different this time around," Scamander says, after a silence has developed. "Maybe he's not even alive, or maybe he's been convinced to stay away from us."

"What do you mean? How can something be different?"

He sighs. "Maybe he's in the middle of a research project, something like that. I don't know. Maybe there _is_ some perfectly non-timey-wimey explanation for this, but… At any rate it's time to come clean. I don't think that we're living out history as it went the first time around."

"But…" This is an insane thing to be hearing. It goes at odds with everything you've been thinking since you appeared in a field five months ago. "Then how do I remember Professor Evans?"

"Because something _else_ happened too."

"I don't get it."

Scamander nods. "It's difficult. I'll admit that. So try to keep up with an old man— Something happened. We'll call it Event One. This left us all standing in a field, minus one Filius Flitwick. Before Event One, we were all existing in History A. Afterwards, we found ourselves in 1904, in History B. Without a Filius, I'll add again."

"Okay…"

"Then something else happens— we'll call it Event Two. That creates History C, which is populated by everyone from History A and the Filius from History B."

"So I'm from History B?"

Scamander shakes his head. "You're from…" He waves a hand in the air as he tries to find the right words. "You're from History B plus a million or more. You're why there have to be two events, though. They might have the same cause, but one happened in History A and the other didn't happen until History B, because they're affecting us differently.

"For some reason, each history creates a duplicate of itself. History A makes B, makes C, makes D, maybe forever. When a new one is created, it takes the Harry, the Charles, the Tom, and so on, from History A. _Every time_. But it takes the Filius from the most recent history to be created. If X is the number of universes created, if we can call the most recent universe 'History A plus X," then you are always taken from History A plus X minus one."

You mull this over and try to process it. "And why do you think this?"

"Exhibit A: Harry never told me a thing about any of this. That's only weak evidence, but it's still important to note. He never told me anything. Exhibit B," Scamander continued, ticking his fingers as he went. "Portraits, ghosts, magical diaries… I tracked down Alfred Marley's remains and interrogated him. I was able to get a lot of information about a lot of things, but either Marley was never displaced in time, his memories were altered, or for some reason he's refusing to tell me anything. Not impossible, but definitely implausible. Are you following me still?"

"Yes."

"Good. Exhibit C: In the past two months I have arranged for twenty different letters to reach me at different points in my life between twenty and forty years old, through different means. I've entrusted letters with the post. I've buried them in places that wouldn't be dug up until my day. I even switched out one of my family's heirloom books with a copy that would tell me all about this after I graduated Hogwarts. Which leads us, finally, to Exhibit D: I remember that heirloom book very well. _Very_ well. But I changed a number of the passages in my duplicate and then I…" He swallows. "I destroyed the original."

"But why do you think this has happened a lot? Maybe we're only in History C."

"Think about those investments, sales, bets, and speculations that we've been making. It has been months since we've started but everything is going perfectly according to plan. We should have been derailed months ago but everything is accurate down to the last knut and shilling.

"There are only two ways that this could happen. The first is a stable time loop, which is looking to be less and less likely with every day that passes by. The second way is that, from History C on, Harry gives you the letter. It works horribly in the beginning, but we keep revising it in accordance with the events as they happened in the most recent history, until finally the letter foretells events _perfectly_."

"And you don't know how many times this has happened?"

"With all of the variables in play it has to be in the thousands, but the situation could be even more complicated than I imagine, and once the list has been perfected there is no reason that a million histories couldn't play out one after the other, exactly the same. So long as we follow the list exactly, there isn't necessarily anything to change events from that history on."

"And you don't know what caused Event Two?"

"No. Maybe it was the result of us trying to figure out what happened the first time. But no. I don't have any ideas."

_A/N Ibuprofren is in the cabinet to the right. _


	7. Lysander Scamander, 1904

**Chapter seven: Lysander Scamander, 1904**

Your name is Lysander Scamander, and you are about to have a conversation with one Harry Potter. A conversation that is perhaps long-overdue. But you can be forgiven, you think, for preferring to play it safe and wait for confirmation.

Hogwarts typically does not allow visitors through the floo, but Harry has instructed the wards to let you through the fires of his office.

"How are you holding up, being on the other side of the classroom?"

Harry sighs. "The Headmistress assures me that it'll get easier. I'm still waiting for it to happen."

He looks older than he did when you first arrived here. He doesn't look as old as you remember him, however. It is the stress, but not strictly from being the professor. It is from the complexities that are all around that position, by nature of him being the one to hold it. He is probably the first Hogwarts professor to have been displaced by time, after all, and he is having to teach potions to someone he best remembers as the one who tried to kill him.

"I have not been completely forthcoming," you say as he takes a seat across from you. "I have never lied outright to you. But I did know that you held certain incorrect beliefs, and I did nothing to correct them. Harry, you never told me of having any adventures in time, save for the one in your third year."

You explain to him what you told to Filius, and wait for him to adjust to the news. Then: "There is one other piece of evidence, which I did not mention to Filius. It did not seem prudent."

"What is that?"

You unfurl the letter and hand it to Harry. "As you'll remember, our instructions mention certain purchases to be made with the money from our investments. Near the end, you will notice an order to purchase an invisibility cloak and then to pay for certain cosmetic changes to its appearance."

"So we're going to need an invisibility cloak?"

"And what is below that?"

"Instructions to purchase a ring," Harry says. "With specifications… This sounds like the Gaunt ring. The ring that the Resurrection Stone was mounted on."

"Why do you think that we would need an invisibility cloak and an imitation Resurrection Stone?"

It only takes a second for Harry to consider the possibilities. "We're going to steal the Deathly Hallows."

"Which obviously couldn't have happened if we were inhabiting the original timeline." You pause. "There are other implications of this. None of us are the people that we were going to become. In a sense, we can't be. We're not even the people that were going to become them. Tom isn't going to become Voldemort. Dominique isn't going to leave a string of mysteriously-rich dead husbands behind her. Necessarily. And you and I and everyone else— we're doubles. Copies. Doppelgangers."

"We're not real, then."

"Oh, we're plenty real. I think, I feel, I perceive. Yes, I'm real. But there are thousands of other people who are also named Lysander Scamander, and who share my memories. And of all of them, only one does not have the glorious opportunity that is now before us."

"Excuse me? What's so glorious about this?" He glares at you. "I'm not seeing the benefits of being stolen away from my _family_, Lysander."

"But we can make a better world." You lean back in your chair. "It was yet many decades off from the time that you remember, but the Statute of Secrecy was broken."

He gasps. "How did it happen?"

"We called it the Electric Revolution," you explain. "Imagine if you were able to not just take a picture with a camera but instantly send that picture to any other person with a camera. Even many people. Imagine if there were great repositories of information to which you could send these pictures. This power was already developing in your present time, but it only continued to race forward.

"We treated it with caution. We even added muggles to our employ, and incentivized muggleborns to specialize in dealing with the powers being developed by the muggles. They carved out quite the niche in the Ministry. But we didn't respect that power well enough. Every time we slipped up, the damage was almost too great to handle. And then, one day, it was, and we couldn't erase the evidence of our world. It didn't even happen in Britain. It was a Romanian muggle who took the video and added it to the database."

Harry swallows. "How bad was it?"

"Bad," you tell him. "Dozens of wars broke out. Former colonies of the British Empire were displeased to learn that populations within their borders were still under the control of what had once been an arm of the British government. The United States learned that there were no less than six sovereign nations existing within its borders. In Eastern Europe and Russia, the massacres of the wizarding populations there were discovered.

"But more than this, the muggles learned that we had killed them— we had killed them by stealing the decades they could have lived. Wizards can live a century and a half, and we don't do it because magic makes us better. It's the charms and potions that do it. Every muggle that died from plague or when they were eighty, when a wizard would be middle-aged, died because we had chosen secrecy. There were genocides that we could have prevented. We had even violated their minds and memories. And then wars led to other wars, like a spreading fire."

Like nuclear fire. Like fiendfyre.

"How many died?"

"We stopped counting bodies."

It was easier to calculate the number of the living, you think.

"How did it end?"

"We grew tired of the killing. It wasn't even a matter of wanting to step away from the brink of self-extinction. We didn't care about that at the time. We were just too tired to take the plunge."

"Did I…" He pauses. When he speaks again, you know he was considering how far a man can fall. "Would I hate myself, if I knew what I had done? Or was I a good person to the end?"

"The fact that you are phrasing the question like that says that I should not tell you anything."

"Lysander!"

"The person that I remember, who died, is not you. You will never have those experiences."

He nods. "No one will. How do we stop it?"

"We don't, Harry. We're going to make it happen, but under our terms."

"You just made it sound like more people died than lived. And you _want_ that to happen?"

"There is no way to hold it off forever. The best that we can do is make it happen before the damage would be too great."

"You can't know that," Harry says. "If we know what happened then we can plan for it. We can keep it from happening."

"We cannot afford to underestimate the muggles another time."

"Then we _won't_. We'll take them as seriously as we have to. But… is there any way that doing this earlier would stop all of the wars?"

"Some would be stopped. There would be others to replace them, owing to the politics of the day."

"Then that's not good enough. If we're going to change the world, then we're going to do it by saving people. Not by killing them."

You do not debate with him. Debating will get you nowhere.

You sigh. "Then we will do nothing. We must be united on these things."

You hear the students arriving and settling in at their desks, and Harry shakes his head. "Voldemort's class."

"Not Voldemort," you remind him. "Tom."

"Right. _Right_." You can't read the expression on his face.

You wait a moment to watch him leave his office, and then you light a fire and prepare to depart.


	8. Harry Potter, 1904 (2)

_A/N Never fear, I am fully aware that this is too small to be your weekly update. Another chapter will be coming along in a couple of days._

**Chapter eight: Harry Potter, 1904**

Your name is Harry Potter, and you are recovering from one of the more substantial revelations of your life.

Your name is Harry Potter, but you find yourself wondering if that is who you really are, if you are just another Harry's double.

Your name is Harry Potter, and if history is going to be rewritten… You are going to tie up a loose end.

You are going to do what should have been done a long time ago.

"Do you really mean to tell me that you think this is puce?" you ask, doing your best to channel the unborn spirit of Severus Snape. It is something that you have done many times in the potions classroom, and you think that you are rather good at it. "This has to be as far away from puce as you can get. Did someone _vomit_ into it?"

You are perhaps a little too good at being Snape, but you are distinctly aware now of the dangers of potion brewing. It is your job to keep them too uncomfortable to take risks and be casual.

"I'm sorry, sir." The young man in front of you is about ready to grit his teeth. You can tell that you're getting to him.

Not least because he is, no doubt, aware that you just sabotaged his potion.

"Stay after class. We're going to have a discussion about your attention to detail, Tom."


	9. Tom Riddle, 1904

_A/N This is a long one. There wasn't any way to cut it down to the normal size, sorry._

_By the way, the characters are developing theme bands, for lack of a better word. Not just theme bands, but theme songs. I won't tell you who's who, and I can guarantee that you'll get one of these wrong, but for what it's worth, one character is going well with Mumford & Sons, and another with Blue Oyster Cult. _

**Chapter eight: Tom Riddle, 1904**

Your name is Tom Riddle, and you are the boy with the thousand faces. A face for every person, carefully calculated and drawn just for them. Some might consider it a kind of gift, if they were so inclined. You do not simply put on the face of the charming, intelligent orphan boy for all the world to see. You tailor each face for each person that you meet, a face that is as unique as they are.

In your masquerade you are a reflection and microcosm of the whole world. Once upon a time you thought that you had found a world where you could be allowed to bare no face except the one beneath your masks. But just as quickly as he revealed that world to you, Dumbledore proved that it was just the same as the world of muggles.

You were not sure what had transpired between your future self and Evans— or Potter, or whatever name he claimed. Yet it was certain that you knew of each other, or that he knew of you. Moreover, and this may be the most unsettling part, he knew you well enough to recognize you in your teenage years.

And his first reaction, which you will never forget, was to point a wand in your face. He wanted to kill you. You had presented a face to him at some point in your life, and it had not been pleasing to him.

Professor Evans is at his desk now, marking notes on a few papers as the rest of the class files out. You have been asked to stay behind. You have avoided being alone with Evans since your first meeting, but you are afraid of what may happen if you make this difficult for him. If you present yourself as naïve and unsuspecting, however, then you may find an opening.

You are well-acquainted with fear, if you are going to be honest with yourself. You do not want to, but you dislike the idea of weakness that necessarily associates itself with any desire to retreat from the truth.

You remember the Blitz. You remember summer days at the orphanage, wondering when you would next hear the sirens blare and the roar of aircraft and the boom of explosions. You can remember the exact number of times that London was bombed, a number that has burned itself into your thoughts, a yellow-brown stain that refuses to come out. You did not experience every one of them, but the number is still there, scarred into your brain.

And you are _afraid_. More afraid that you would admit to any person. But the Sorting Hat saw, and it forced you to confront it. All that was left was to decide whether you would be self-satisfied in your weakness, or triumph over it.

Evans must surely know of your intelligence, even if he was at odds with it. How he must wonder at why the Slytherin deigned to join Gryffindor. But you will not run from your fears. You will not be ruled by them. And it would not only be weak, but stupid, to think that none of the other houses have anything to teach you.

Evans stops his work and turns to you. "Thank you for waiting, Tom. Follow me to my office."

You do so cautiously, scanning your surroundings and watching Evans for any sign of impending hostility.

Instead he sits on his desk, a most non-professorly thing to do, and sighs.

"It's obvious that I know who you are, right?" he says.

You nod.

"Good. That's good." He nods, seemingly to himself. "I know everything about you. Lord Voldemort."

Your body tenses. Your hand strays as close to your wand as it can without being obvious.

You have practiced this before. From this position you can draw your wand and cast one of several spells nonverbally very quickly. With his own hands where they are, you will have the advantage, and so you feel somewhat safer.

"I'm tired of killing, you know," he continues. "I don't want anybody else to die. I _will_ kill you if I have to," he says, and your hand moves a centimeter closer to your wand. "But I don't want to."

That's good. He'll probably hesitate. He's hesitating even now, you think, because of course he's about to try to kill you anyway. People are such _talk_ sometimes.

"So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to show you the future. Your future. And then you're going to make a decision."

"What happens if I don't choose how you want me to?"

"Then I lose," Harry says, and you frown in surprise. "Do you want to know what the future holds for you?" He slides off his desk and goes around it, retrieving a shallow dish from one of the boxes stacked nearby.

You realize that he does not have a wand on him. This is more worrying than reassuring, because it is evidence that he is adept in wandless magic.

He sits the dish in front of you, and you see that it is glistening with silver memories. It is a pensieve.

"Look, and see," he says softly, and in that moment you are as much entranced by the idea of foreknowledge as you are by anything else.

You fall into the professor's memories, and you behold two figures sitting in an office. One is immediately recognizable as Dumbledore, if some years older. At first you almost think the other to be Professor Evans, but the face is not right and Dumbledore is too young, and then you realize, yes, it is yourself. Older, but still yourself, and with the first signs of… _something_ in your flesh, as if the figure were being seen through a glass darkly.

Dumbledore is as suspicious of you as ever. You came to apply for a teaching position, but you are denied.

You enter a new memory. You see a man— you cannot tell who— unwrapping a turban. The cloth falls around his head, and there is a face, wretched and haggard, which speaks and declares itself to be none other than yourself.

"…Ripped from my body," the face says. "I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost…"

Before you can begin to process all that it has said, you find yourself in entirely new surroundings. A man is there, and in his arms is a skeletal, dwarfish form with stretched-out limbs and a sunken chest. "Kill the spare…" it says, and you know that you are, once again, looking at yourself.

Your vulnerability is almost too much to bear, and you wonder at what you must have suffered to reduce you to such a state.

The scene shifts once more, just slightly, and you know immediately where you are in this memory. A tall figure, with posture and demeanor that you might consider regal. But however he stands, the faint marks that you beheld in his meeting with Dumbledore— they have set in fully, like a maturing cancer.

"Come out, Harry… come out and play, then…"

He is nothing human. Having seen his every fall, you cannot help but wonder if he is somehow far removed from life itself.

"It will be quick… It might even be painless… I would not know… I have never died…"

There is a part of you that is nevertheless entranced. If you must transcend life to overcome death, _then so be it_.

But the world is not so kind. Another memory replaces this one. A body falling backwards, arms apart and its sickly eyes rolling back.

You are in the world again, staring at the pensieve. "Scourgify," you hear the professor say, and you realize that your mouth and throat are burning with stomach acid.

You force your breathing under control. You force your mind away from the taste of vomit in your mouth.

"T-That…" You stop talking, unwilling to say anything more until you have recovered.

"I killed you, Tom. I wish I hadn't had to do it, but I did. So look back, and think about what you saw. I have other memories, and I'm going to give them to you along with this pensieve."

"Why? To torture me even more? I will find a way around this—"

"Yes. And I hope you will."

You stare at him, uncomprehending.

"Dumbledore thought that the greatest power in the universe was love. He thought that it could overcome anything, and that the reason you lost was that you couldn't understand it."

Hogwash, you think, and as if he is reading your thoughts, Harry continues, "It's a nice sentiment, but I don't think that it's true. A lot of bad things have been done out of love, anyway, and sometimes it doesn't accomplish anything. No, there's an even stronger force than that: Self-interested cooperation and tolerance. All we have to do is realize that it's better to work together than kill each other, and we don't even have to _like_ anyone else to have a different world."

You smile. "A pity it isn't true. Those who act from a position of strength can negotiate as they please, but it is only an indulgence on their part. Some enemies may cooperate out of necessity, but then they often turn on each other before the day is through."

"Then pretend that I'm in the position of strength," Evans says, "and call this an indulgence. I _could_ kill you," he says again, "but I don't want to. So I'm stepping off my mountain and coming down to the plain to be equal with you Tom, and I'm going to make you an offer. Because I think that I know what you want more than anything else."

"What is that?"

"You want to live forever. More than anything else. More than you want power. More than you want to hurt people. You just want to find a way to keep from dying. And more than anything else, I want to help you do that."

"Are you…" No. He's not looking to be your ally. This is the entirely wrong tone for that conversation. You snort. "I don't know what you're looking to do, but I don't need your help."

"You do. You saw what happened to you. You had horcruxes and more horcruxes," he says, and you flinch at the idea that he knows about them. "And three teenagers managed to break most of them and kill you in the end."

"Impossible."

"You saw it, Tom. You were insane. Your judgment was impaired. I think it was all those horcruxes that did it, but you're kind of a unique case. I can't know for sure. But it's a safe bet, wouldn't you agree?"

"I only have your word for that."

Evans nods. "Then take my word for the moment, and when we're done I'll let you into the pensieve as you wish. You can look at every memory I have of you, and then decide what you think. But in the meantime, here's my deal: I'm going to do everything in my power to help you find another way to achieve immortality, and I will teach you everything that I know. About magic, about your rise to power, about world events since the 1940s. Everything that I know, you will know. I know that you don't trust me, so we'll make an Unbreakable Vow."

That is… attractive. But you are not stupid enough to think that he will not be asking for something in return. Especially if his intention is to frame the deal within an Unbreakable Vow.

"What do you want in return?" you ask.

"You don't kill anyone without my approval," he says. "Not one person. In fact, you do not take any actions at all with the intention of a person's death. You don't cast the curse yourself, you don't tell your mates to do it, you don't say horrible things that you know will drive somebody to suicide, none of it. Not without my approval. But if I get old and we still haven't found another means of immortality, then I will, as a condition of the Vow, offer my life."

"For what?"

"As the sacrifice that you need to make a horcrux. If I'm going to die anyway, and we haven't found another way for you live, then I'll let you kill me. One horcrux is all you get, but in this scenario you're guaranteed to get one. And you might even get something better, if we figure out another way for you to live forever."

"You aren't asking me to give up anything else?"

"Tom, if you want to rule the world, and if you can manage it without killing anyone, then I won't object. Anybody who could conquer the world like that would be better than most of the politicians that are running things right now."

You consider his words very carefully.

"No other conditions?"

"None at all."

"Why?"

"I'm tired of people dying, Tom." He smiles, not sadly or with an air of tiredness but fully and warmly. "You can stay back here for as long as you'd like. The house-elves will bring you food if you need any. Take the pensieve with you if you'd like, and come back to me once you've made a decision. Give it all the time you need."

"And that's it? What if I say no?"

"Then I gambled and I lost."

Professor Evans leaves his office, and a moment later you can hear the sound of students pouring in from the hallway.


	10. Charles Mulciber, 1905

**Chapter ten: Charles Mulciber, 1905**

You are blissfully unaware of the deeper machinations going on among your party, although you have seen signs, and someone else may be interpreting them correctly.

Your chief friend, despite being one year higher than you and in a different house, is Dominique Zabini. You meet a couple of times a week at least, and sometimes she comes over to the Slytherin table at mealtimes. You would be worried for her, but she's proven capable of handling herself against any and all tricks that they pull against her. It was shocking when you realized it, but she notices everything that goes on. _Everything_. She's almost an honorary Slytherin— _almost_. There's no such thing as a honorary Slytherin for real.

Sometimes she mentions the possibility of going to your Common Room. You almost want it to happen, just to see the results, but the smarter part of you knows that the rules are different behind closed doors and that she might not be able to handle it.

Second to Dom, and with somewhat of the same relationship, is Gwenant. She's in your house but a year below you, and it was obvious that she didn't have any friends. Anyone could tell if they knew the signs: A Slytherin who sticks to public spaces is one who's counting on the house's dislike for baring its internal conflicts to the world. If you're respected enough, or have friends enough, to be safe, then you don't have to worry so much, but one who is weak and alone can, oddly enough, only find refuge in open spaces.

Like any Slytherin in her position she suspected some deeper plot when you approached her but, possibly out of desperation, she eventually started responding to your comments. Perhaps she recognized that you had to stay in the open just as much— you haven't yet built a reputation for yourself, and even being related to one of the professors isn't enough to keep the Common Room safe. So you and she stay in the library, where you lend help with her homework.

You like History of Magic for possibly the first time in your life. There is absolutely no change from when you were a student. So long as you don't look at the other students you can actually pretend that nothing has happened at all. As far as you can remember, Binns is keeping his lessons constant _to the day_.

You and Gwenant like herbology, too. It's a nice, quiet class, where nothing can go wrong unless you and you alone decide not to follow instructions— unlike Potions, where somebody else's negligence can affect students at an entirely different table. You almost had to replace your cauldron after somebody's moonseed poison turned into a silver-eating gas. You had never seen Professor Evans so _angry_ before.

The worst class has to be Defense Against the Dark Arts. You wish that you still had Galatea Merrythought as your teacher, but apparently it will be a couple of years yet before Professor Doppler's surely-inevitably breakdown and replacement. Or maybe she'll be sacked for excessive emotional cruelty to the students.

Not that she intends to do it, you're sure, but somehow she manages to explain things in exactly the most terrifying way possible. Maybe she's trying to scare all of you away from the Dark Arts or get you focused on learning how to defend yourself from them or something, but you would prefer that this be done without getting nightmares too.

In some classes you get annoyed when half of your time is spent reading from the textbook. In Defense Against the Dark Arts you wish that you would spend all of your time doing that. Most of the class period is blissfully taken up by that, or group exercises, but then there are the five minutes here, or the ten minutes there, when she deigns to lecture. She doesn't have any mode of talking but monotone, and her face is as blank as a fresh sheet of parchment. It's almost like getting a lesson from Professor Binns, but the ghost teaches history, not… not about _dark magic_.

The most awful part about it isn't how much detail that she goes into, though. It's the kinds of details. It's impossible not to think, with the way that she says it, that she's recounting some of this information from personal experience. And then you consider, because it's impossible to ignore, the deadness of her expression, and as sure as daylight you're going to have a nightmare about Professor Doppler being tortured for years in some anonymous country.

(And worse that _that_, maybe, is the sneaking suspicion that, as bad as these things seem to be, Professor Doppler isn't telling you even half of what she's gone through. You're only a third-year. How much worse can the Dark Arts get?)


	11. Lysander Scamander, 1905

**Chapter eleven: Lysander Scamander, 1905**

You have secrets.

This shouldn't be a surprise to any hypothetical listeners-in to your mind. Any practitioner of legilimency knows, as a matter of course, that _everyone_ has secrets. There are only a very few people in the world who have no secret selves, and they are either children or insane. Sometimes both.

You are doing your best to avoid scrutiny. You don't even want to be noticed. To be suspected. You must remain _above_ suspicion. This is the first rule of defending yourself against legilimency: Make sure that nobody even thinks they have to use it on you.

There are more rules than this, of course. Occlumency, in the sense of a means of mental protection that can be practiced only by magical folk, is generally considered to be the only good defense against legilimency. In your opinion? Occlumency is the last resort of the desperate, and anyone who chooses that route to begin with is a fool. A damned sorry fool, and one whose secrets won't long remain in the dark.

Lord Voldemort is still remembered in your day as one of the more talented legilimencers of the modern era, and the only thing that is going to change this is that, as time went on, fewer people were going to consider the Twentieth Century as part of the modern era. He wasn't even an alumnus of Wollstonecraft, which makes him doubly extraordinary. Most of the masters, past and present, hail from that school. It's a natural consequence of including legilimency in your standard curriculum.

But to get to your point, there were many accomplished occlumens, one of them even an expatriate alumnus of Wollstonecraft, who succumbed to the force of Voldemort's mind. Especially in the latter years— one thing that insanity is _not_ bad for is the Mind Arts. Fighting off the legilimency of a madman is like fighting a hydra, many heads coming at you from all directions and fighting in a way that you didn't expect. And even if they don't use occlumency, trying to make sense of the chaos within is often a fruitless endeavor that may even damage your own mind.

Despite his power, however, there is one group of people who _never_ succumbed to Voldemort's mental assaults: The people who never got attacked.

If no one ever decides to use legilimency on you then it doesn't matter how poor your occlumency is.

This technique can be kept up to a certain extent even after the first round failed. If someone does decide to peruse your mind, you can make it so that the contents therein are so banal that any passing suspicions will be satisfied. Obviously they were wrong, and now you can go your merry way without any further harm. Occlumency's best point here is that you are aware of such incidents, so that you know how successful your first line of defense was and how often you must rely on the second.

The third rule to defending your mind without occlumency is to sacrifice secrets and get your attacker to think that what they're looking for, the big secret that you're _really_ hiding, is something that isn't as important. It's like sacrificing your bishop in order to get your pawn to the last row and promote her to a Queen. And it works so much more often.

You're playing on the pride of your attacker, and a little bit of occlumency is very helpful here in order to assure them that you had the defenses that your secret merits. You want them to feel resistance, but not so much that they bring to bear enough force to maybe turn your mind to jelly.

In the very best of circumstances, you will be able to offer up a secret that— to your attacker— isn't a secret at all. Not everyone is looking for the same things, and if you are lucky then there will be another party from which you are hiding things. You can even lay out the rules of the game if you'd like. Sometimes giving up your strategy is just another step to victory.

Rare, but it happens sometimes.

This is not to say that you don't make use of occlumency. It's still very important to have, but you can't rely on it as your first line of defense. The misconception comes because an occlumency-based defense is so much easier, contrary to popular conception, than doing it your way. An occlumens only has to keep their shields up, but you? You have to regulate your thinking all the time.

Only in the most private of moments can you allow yourself to really consider the contents of your mind. At all other times you can only think around your true secrets. You can never let them actually rise up to the surface.

In effect, you can't even let yourself know what you're actually thinking.

But there is an advantage to this way of doing things, which people don't understand. Your fortress without walls, without appearances, without substance, is _unassailable_. You do not exist. Hence, you cannot be confronted. And where there is no confrontation there can be no defeat.

And you have secrets aplenty that you cannot divulge to the world. There is a very great possibility that all sorts of bad things would happen were it were discovered that you and your compatriots hailed from elsewhere in time. Maybe that secret can be revealed in years to come, at least to a select few, but it cannot be made common knowledge.

You are wondering, as well, if there are parties already aware of your existence. This is a greater secret that you must keep hidden. You have not forgotten that a prophecy of some sort foretold the coming of Harry Potter as a Hogwarts professor, with several children in tow. Who made that prophecy?

This is why you need to find Nicholas Flamel. He knows. He has to know. And when you find him you will find out what else he knows, and whether there is more cause to worry than you have discovered already.


	12. Dominique Zabini, 1905

**Chapter twelve: Dominique Zabini, 1905**

Like Charles, you are not privy to the goings-on and arguably-backroom dealings that are beginning to transpire among some of your merry band, per se. But neither are you unaware of them. The atmosphere between Professor Evans and Tom appears to have changed. Once dangerous and charged with fear and deadly tension, it is— still dangerous, but no longer as tense.

And while it has by no means grown to match the once-great antagonism between those two, you think that there was an argument between Evans and Scamander a few months ago. It does not seem to have been anything lasting. They are still cooperating and getting on amiably with each other, but perhaps they are more guarded with each other than they were before. You wonder if Scamander has noticed the change between Evans and Tom.

Marley appears to be firmly in Scamander's camp, not least because he is the only one who is fully fluent in Latin. It is possible that his loyalties may change as he finds himself able to effectively communicate with the rest of the world. Filius— your Filius, not the younger one attending Hogwarts— will likely find himself there if he spends time only with Marley and Scamander. You will have to make sure to offset this if you are going to pull him in your direction.

You hope that there will not be any conflicts in your little group, but if the worst comes then you will make sure that as many pieces as possible are in your pocket. Evans and Scamander are the ones that you have to worry about right now. You can't let factions form around them.

Nobody pays attention to you for longer than it takes to catch your ear. They talk with you, because you have proven yourself able to keep a secret. They don't wonder what you're able to piece together about their pasts. You're a silly fourteen-year-old girl— a loyal Hufflepuff and a fellow conspirator by default, but you spend far too much time chasing boys and listening to gossip for anyone to think that you're carefully committing it all to memory.

That's how it has to be, though. So long as you're the Nobody Girl you can be overlooked. You can watch for signs of trouble. Maybe Evans and Tom are okay now but you don't know why, and that's a problem. You don't know what went on with Scamander, either, and even though you know about the search for Flamel there could be other things that they're keeping from you. Evans, Marley, and Scamander, they're all adults. It would be like them to keep complicated truths from the rest of you.

You are an information sink. Like one of Ravenclaw's birds, you are watching everything, and you reveal none of the things that you learn.

You have friends in every House, and through them you have joined every Fourth and Fifth Year study group. You never let yourself get the spell right on the first try, but you commit yourself to repeating your attempts until you get it right. The school year is drawing to a close in a couple of months, and you have successfully lived up to the other reputation of Hufflepuff House: You may not be the smartest, but you will apply yourself to your work until you get it right.

Again, nobody worries about whether you might figure out things they would rather you not know. Determination is different from cunning. You haven't pushed your luck yet but you know that, should you be found reading a book supposedly too advanced for your age, nobody will start to wonder if they've misjudged you and question the wisdom in telling you anything at all. They will simply see it as more evidence of good old Dom Zabini's Hufflepuff nature, doggedly pursuing whatever catches her fancy and maybe eventually figuring it out in a timely manner but probably _not_.

Chasing boys has been helpful in this regard. It is almost common knowledge that That Zabini Girl's favorite tactic is starting a one-on-one study session with her target. It just so happens that you are interested in older boys— not unreasonable— and that they just so happen to be studying advanced topics. You have a remarkable amount of success in your pursuits because of your reputation as a study partner (it helps that you target those who are struggling and need the help), and you doubt that anyone has realized yet that you're more interested in the excuse for studying advanced material than in your dates.

You may not be the only one who is on the lookout for dangers to your timelost group, but you are the only one who is being overlooked.


	13. Filius Flitwick, 1905

**Chapter thirteen: Filius Flitwick, 1905**

You knew that it was going to happen. You remembered it happening, you remember reading about in the _Daily Prophet_. And as expected, the letter from Professor Evans was predicting the fallout.

Move the money out of Gringotts. Move the money out of anything that the goblins can touch or influence. Move it overseas, distribute it to American and Continental companies and holdings, but stay out of Germany and France and anywhere else that the goblins have population or pull.

You don't know what's going to happen next. None of you do. The directions are to be followed through just a few days before you found yourself sent to the past— or will find yourself, or however that works. Maybe it's just a precaution. Or maybe Professor Evans heard something that you didn't.

But whatever happens, or doesn't happen, you know how it's going to start.

You are in an alleyway in Muggle London. The sun will not rise for another hour and thirty minutes. The streetlights are broken— or put out by a delumination charm, possibly— so that the only light is coming from the tip of your wand. Along the ground flows traces of the pea-soup fog of London. Its yellowness strikes you as extraordinarily alien this time and you cannot help but wonder if there is more than the uncleanliness of the air to blame this morning.

There is a body at your feet. It was mostly obscured until you swept away the fog. There are great chunks of meat missing from it. You can see to the bone in places, and there are scratches from teeth on them— the victim was _eaten_. Perhaps a third of the victim's flesh is missing, and one of the bones has been broken open and drained somewhat of its marrow.

You perform a few diagnostic charms to try to get an idea of what happened. You are not proficient enough to tell if there are, perhaps, traces of a stunning charm, so all that you can say is that there was no especially strong or obvious magic used on the body before its death. There appears to have been none used in the actual killing, either. You do not have to wonder whether knives or the diffindo were used, because it seems that the cause of death was… was the bite marks.

Without signs of strangulation, stabbing, water in the lungs or a sealed throat, or any other such method of killing, there are three possibilities which present themselves to you. The first is that one of a few kinds of magic were used, spells that would kill without a trace and without leaving aftereffects that you could detect. There are more than a few different spells that could have been used for this, and not all of them are very obscure. You are only a student at Hogwarts, after all.

The second possibility is that the victim was killed by a method that would leave physical, but not magical traces, and the traces of these wounds were removed when the killer ate them. This is a disturbing possibility, and suggests that the murderer had some reason for hiding this method. To make it look like the attack of a beast? Possibly, but even you have been able to figure out that those scratches and bite marks came from human teeth. And that wouldn't explain the presence of the body here, or why there is no blood at the scene of the crime.

The third possibility is that the victim was eaten alive. You don't want to think about that any more than you have to.

All of this would be merely distressing, but there is another cause for alarm: the victim is a goblin. Not only that, but there will be more to come. You remember them being reported in the _Prophet_, all the way up until when you found yourself transported to the past.

You don't know for sure why the letter's instructions state for you and your friends to move everything that you have. It could be a simply precaution, since none of you know what will happen in the days after the letter is delivered to you. Or, in his station as a professor, Evans could be privy to some knowledge that you, at least, will not have at the time. He could even be recalling it from history books, for that matter. You cannot forget that he comes from your future.

But what you do know is this— among the causes of the Goblin Rebellion of 1612, were the serial murders of Yardley Platt, who killed several dozen goblins over the course of his career. Goblins have long memories, and the stresses are still there. There has not been another goblin rebellion since the Eighteenth Century, but… It is not out of the question. It has never been out of the question, so long as the right stressors were there.

From your pocket you retrieve a charmed piece of paper. You tap it with your wand and it begins to unfold and refold into the shape of a small songbird. You tap it again to complete the illusion for the benefit of any possible Muggle onlookers, and then it takes flight. It will head to the Ministry and then to the Aurors. A description of the situation, and the location of the alley, were written here before you ever arrived.

The _Prophet_ had reported that an anonymous tipster had alerted the Ministry to the body's presence before any Muggles could come across it. You were tempted not to come here, but without knowing that you were in fact the tipster you wouldn't have known whether you could have changed the course of events at all. If you told the Ministry then you were responsible. If you didn't then you would just find out that it had been someone else all along.

So you came here, to see it for yourself, and to play your small part in whatever is to come.


End file.
